In the last couple of weeks we have been working on our company OKR’s for this quarter, as well as everyone's personal goals.

I found that there are two difficult things about setting personal goals:

1. It is actually hard to come up with things to work on
2. If you have found your topics, it is difficult to come up with concrete steps to work on

For this post, I want to zoom in on the first point and give you some ideas that could help you.

• Keep a notebook with ideas. This is not going to help you right now, but if you have to set goals in your job at regular intervals, why not start a list you keep up to date with things you come across you want to master?
• Ask smart people around you for skills they think are important for someone in your position. By changing the question from “what should I learn” to “what do you think is an important skill”, you take out the potential personal attack. This angle could give you valuable ideas about things to grow in.
• Review lists of skills to see if there are interesting things to focus on. You can use my list of soft skills or my list of executive skills. This is also a nice post, which lists 12 universal skills.
• Know the pro’s in your field. They can be a great source of inspiration. I have also found that almost anyone is willing to answer the “which skills do you find the most important” question from above, so it might be well worth it to send them an email to learn more.

What are your tactics for coming up with personal (work related) goals?